When Dallas Pratt worked at an outpost of Aesop in an outdoor shopping mall outside Chicago, one of her and her co-workers’ favorite ways of drawing in new customers was making a concoction they called “sidewalk tea”. They would put a few drops of scented lotion in a cup of hot water, and then they would pour it on to the slab of concrete outside the shop. As the water evaporated, the smell of the lotion would fill the air.
“It drew people in,” Pratt tells me. “They asked questions. They spent time.” And, crucially, they bought stuff.
